Bill Skarsgård is one of the greatest—if not the greatest—horror character actors of his generation. (Full disclosure: this writer already claimed as much in an essay last year.) Still, he almost let Count Orlok suck the blood out of any future baddies he may have in the tank—even Pennywise, whom he'll (thankfully) be reprising for Max's upcoming It prequel, Welcome To Derry.
While it's hard to imagine anyone else beneath all that cakey white makeup (except perhaps original Pennywise Tim Curry), Skarsgård almost refused to return to the sewer. "I felt like I was done with it in a way," he told Josh Horowitz on a recent episode of his Happy Sad Confused podcast. "I was doing Orlok, and to me it just felt like, okay, this is the nail in the coffin on my monster roles. Pun intended."
Initially, Skarsgård was "kind of over" Pennywise and wanted to do other things. In his words, it was series directors and close personal friends Andy and Barbara Muschietti that lured him back, although it sounds like the spirit of Pennywise itself might have had something to do with it. "He's always there," Skarsgård said of finding that creepy voice again, which apparently came back "immediately."
The actor previously referred to the character as a "toxin" and "destructive relationship" that he needed to exorcise from his system (seems like he may need to try that one again), so it's not surprising that the clown would refuse to succumb to Nosferatu's darkness. Then again, he also told Deadline that, while portraying Orlok, he "was so in that mind state that I felt this is pure evil" and the character was "probably as far as I’ll go in my entire career." Someone could write a whole terrifying saga about these two titans of the genre battling for control of their shared human vessel.
In the meantime, Skarsgård promises that Welcome To Derry will be just as scary as the films. "It's pretty hardcore," he teased. "There's parts of it where we got to explore sides of old Pennywise that we haven't seen." It: Welcome To Derry will premiere sometime in 2025.
